All posts in category 1900-1910

When one’s own efforts failed, and parental matchmaking proved unsuccessful, one often turned to the newspapers in an attempt to find a wife. One such person was Frederick J. Cullum of Saugerties in New York State, whose 1905 advertisement for a wife is certainly unique. As far as we here at Forgotten Stories can tell, we replicate Mr. Cullum’s advertisement in full:

“I here make an offer to marry a lady who can love and aid a well-deserving young man. Maids, widows, and spinsters under forty years might apply. I seek a woman who is in fairly good circumstances and who would cheerfully assist me financially in my aim to accomplish something as a genius.”

Just in case you were concerned that all Cullum had to offer was his genius, he brings a little more to the table:

I will sign agreements with the lady that I marry that I will not touch any intoxicating liquors, turn to whatever religion she may be, attend her church each Sunday, will remove and put on her shoes each morning an night, will install the latest improvements around home and its surroundings, will do all in my power to make her life a happy one, will be a man for home comforts.”

If shoe removal and a new washing machine weren’t enough, Cullum also promised he was a good looking cove, who viewed the world as a glass half full kind of place:

I am twenty-eight, five feet seven, weight 140, blue eyes, dark brown hair, considered to be nice looking, in the best of health, at present in poor circumstances, fairly educated in good common sense, thrifty and believe in an economical and enterprising life; agreeable and always try to look on the sunny side of things.

Just in case you questioned Fred’s motivations, he made it particularly clear that:

I seek to marry first, for love, and wealth a second consideration. I seek to marry a lady who can assist me financially and encourage me on. Anything you care to ask will be cheerfully given. State particulars when you write. Everything will be held strictly confidential to those who answer same. From a lonesome young genius.

Indeed, we can speak from experience that the love life of a good looking, lonesome, young genius can be a difficult one; but we soldier on, and certainly hope Fred found his mate.

Populated by kangaroo rats, coyotes, sidewinders, and chuckwalla lizards Death Valley, California was a graveyard for men who’d succumbed to lack water and died with parched tongue sticking to the roof of the mouth, dust choking the lungs, and the sun roasting their very flesh. What little water there was could be dangerous; many of the springs were tainted with alkali or borax, and would kill a man rather than save him. The locals in the scrabbling towns around the desert called those who braved the sun and sand “Desert Rats,” and the desert claimed some twenty five of them each year.

Lou Wescott Beck almost joined their number, he’d been a prospector for most of his life, searching for gold in the Big Horn country up in Wyoming, over into Montana, then down into Nevada until word reached him in the early 1900’s of a gold strike in Death Valley, California. The strike was a hoax perpetrated by colorful conman Death Valley Scotty, but Beck and his four companions didn’t know that, and traipsed far out into the desert in search of gold.

That first trip, Beck and his men weren’t aware of any of the dangers; unused to the desert, they began to run out of water. Their tongues became swollen, their lips cracked, and they became desperate, as the wandered completely lost with nary a sign post or map to guide them. Every hour or two, they came across the skull of an animal or their fellow man, who’d perished in the sands to be eaten by vultures and coyotes. It was only by pure luck, and with but a few scant hours to live, that they’d discovered a tiny spring at the base of the Panamint Mountains, and so were saved the same fate.

When Beck arrived back in civilization, he was a changed man. Perhaps he’d had an epiphany out in the desert, or made a promise to the Divine. He began to travel Death Valley, equipped with tin strips, paint and signposts. Beck wasn’t alone; his faithful golden retriever Rufus; joined him. The two began to mark out the desert, creating signposts signaling the way to good water, and affixing tin strips to piles of rock; the sun shimmering on the tin could be seen at great distances, and provided a blinking marker pointing the way to water and help. Both of them wore specially made boots; Rufus’ went up to his knees and protected his paws from thorns, snake bites, and desert rocks heated by the sun. Rufus served as a sort of desert St. Bernard, carrying water and antidotes for snake bites in modified saddlebags. Rufus had a good nose too; he’d often find travelers collapsed in the desert long before Beck had an inkling they were there. Rufus himself saved at least a dozen men.

Some folks in Pasadena heard about Beck, took up a collection, and donated a Flanders “20,” a small twenty horsepower open touring car which would let Beck move through the desert faster. He called the car “Chuckwalla” after the hearty desert lizard. The year before, Beck had discovered an automobile which had overheated; beneath it were four corpses, who’d died miserably under the car praying for help and trying to keep out of the sun. So Beck took precautions, and to keep his engine from overheating, he placed asbestos coated blankets over the engine Having prepared his tin strips and signs during the winter, Beck and Rufus set out once more, and during the next few years marked wells as having good water or bad, and erected signs directing travelers back to the roads and to safety.

“It is hard for the average man to understand the fascination the desert has for one who has once braved it and come back” said Beck. “He may hold out against its call as long as the hardships and sufferings he endured are fresh in his mind. But sooner or later he finds himself sighing for the heat, the sands, the mountains, the solitudes, and the wind…”

Beck died in July 1917, but not before the U.S. Government took over his work of marking the desert. Rufus outlived him, retiring to a dog sanitarium in Pasadena, where he was cared for by Dr. T.H. Agnew, and provided every comfort his heart could desire. When Rufus passed on at age 16, a friend delivered his eulogy:

I shall always think of him with the background of the desert, and all about him the limitless space. I shall think of the dawn with its wonderful orange and flame, and the desert blues when the morning stars are sinking, the moon has sunk out of sight, and Arcturus is blazing, and through it all I shall hear the musical baying of Rufus, as he called to the distant mountains to send forth their streams of living water, and I shall remember the intrepid dog soul that never faltered, the life saver, Rufus of the desert.

By mid-summer, 1902, the female members of Washington D.C.’s social set had grown bored with the latest fad; an afternoon teas given in honor of their dogs. The weather was simply too hot for the costume parties which had carried them through the winter and spring. As it was wont to do society came up with a new fad, and the female members of society’s upper crust were visited in their turns by a little Japanese man carrying a wicker basket. He was escorted into the lady ‘s boudoir, and the family butler ordered to inform callers that she was not at home.

The Japanese man got to work, bringing out a handsome embroidered case, in which resided needles of various shapes, sizes and weights. Holding his needle with the air of a Rembrandt, the artist began to rapidly prick the delicate skin, then deftly moving to soak the raw flesh in one of any number of inks he’d brought along.

A few painful hours later, the man finished, and quietly took his leave, and now the society gal had herself 1902’s favorite, permanent, fashion accessory, a tattoo. One woman chose her family’s coat of arms; justly proud because they’d been around since the American Revolution. Another chose an image of a ship, in honor of her fiancée in the navy. This particular belle chose a dragon fly:

And here we have a Fluer-de-lis:

Next time you notice a young lady with a “tramp stamp,” just remember their grandmothers did it first.